We know that a visual demonstration is the best way to show you the benefits of M-Files. We have put together custom demonstrations specific to various industries listed above… Please click on the industry you’re interested in OR for a general demonstration click here.

These demonstrations show a comprehensive use case of M-Files, if you would like a basic system please contact us click here.

Building Industry

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Why your documents are just as important as your tool kit

Having worked with the Building Industry for almost 2 decades we have found that having an effective document management program is key to ongoing success and future expansion.

Most of what we do in a day revolves around information, especially if you are in the office. The support role is key to ensuring that building projects run smoothly and this is critical to cash flow.

The building industry is a complex one that can be greatly simplified with M-Files document management solutions. The M-Files system integrates with industry standard databases like Exact, Epicor, Xero, Netsuite, etc.

This means you will have one point of truth for all of your documents as well as the associated information.

M-Files is an end to end solution. It manages sales and marketing; ordering; stock management; production documentation; quality control; shipping; POD’s; invoicing; payment tracking and warranties.

Filing isn’t your strong suit? Let our document manage system help

In the building industry world, it is often head down and tail up. Now is the time to work on your business instead of just in it. Time to do what is important for the future not just the urgent items for today.

By having an effective document management system, you and your staff will get 30-60 minutes back, each and every day. If you have 8 staff it will be like having 9 at your disposal. What could you achieve by working smarter instead of harder?

Businesses we have worked with have added 10% to their bottom line. In a highly competitive industry this advantage can see you through the tough times and excel in the good times.

Let M-Files deal with your documents, so you don’t have to

By getting in the experts it allows you to focus on what you do best. As a construction company, you wouldn’t attempt to be your own accountant at tax time and same goes for office automation.

We at Ellyard Enterprises with our experience and the award-winning M-Files will do all the work for you. It is a very economical solution and systems can be put together to meet all budgets.

You will see return on investment in 2-3 months, that is almost never the case with new equipment. This means investing with us will pay you now and well into the future.

Click on one of the buttons below to get a free trial or an instant quote. As builders you will be impressed with the small outlay and ease of use.

Hello and welcome to this demonstration of M-Files for Manufacturers. At the end of this meeting, there will be an opportunity to download a fully functioning version of M-Files that you can use for 30 days. There’s also an opportunity to get an instant quote, so you’ve got Costs for the project as well. I’ll give you details at the end of the meeting. To give you an overview of where we are headed today, what this is all about is a way to centralize all the company’s information, whether that’s your paper-based files, electronic documents, your emails, invoices, reports, anything coming in or going out, it is all captured quickly and easily. We need to be able to achieve that quicker and easier than your current manual processes. In the second part of the system is where we’ll start to see the instant benefits of having what you need available to you in seconds, instead of minutes. You’ll be able to search for things by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, via a keyword of a document, a purchase order number, a part number etc. and you’ll have it up on the screen immediately. It’s primarily designed as a productivity tool. In the third and last part of the process, you will see it all coming together. We’re we’re going to look at things like assignments, workflows, version control, document collaboration, all those actionable items that you do with this information and how that can be tracked, managed and simplified.

About us

To give you a little bit of information about M-Files and ourselves we’ve been specializing in this for over 20 years and we do a lot of work across manufacturing, from small organizations to large multi offices etc. I’m sure that you’ll find this of tremendous value.

Here are some of the current pain points that we often see in the manufacturing world and I’m sure that some of these if not all of them will resonate with you. These are some of the problems and issues that we solve with the M-Files solution.

Security

Let’s have a look at how it all works. The whole system’s password-protected, so we’ve got a login, which means we can set up different security levels for different people within the organization. There may be a general filing area that everyone can see. There might be a HR, Payroll that only two or three people can access. Different security levels depending on what you need. From there we can set up individual user rights, where some people get to annotate, edit, append, delete and other people get read-only rights. Behind the scenes, every action that is taken within the system, is automatically tracked and recorded, so you know who’s looked at what document when, who’s approved a quote, who’s updated a version. Any of the actionable items that you do are now tracked and recorded.

Looks Familiar

The last thing about M-Files is, it looks and feels like Windows Explorer and where you’ve got server drives and folders and subfolders all the way down to job files and a job that we’re doing for our client Bloggs. Just like Windows Explorer if we click on this folder, we get a list of documents and like Windows Explorer, when we click on a document we get a preview of that on the right-hand side. The nice thing about that looking and feeling like Windows Explorer, is it’s instantly usable. There’s really no learning curve. The problem with folder-based systems is they don’t work. If you name it incorrectly, put it in the wrong spot, if you and I have differing opinions on how we think it should be named or where it should be saved, it can be difficult to find and retrieve.

We take a vastly different approach instead of having to name this document correctly and putting it in the right spot, what if we had dozens of different links that linked back to it and you could search for it by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in, via a keyword off the document and we have it up on the screen? We call those links metadata. Metadata for this document is listed at the bottom, where we’ve noted who the client is, the job we’re doing for them, who your job manager is, document dates, types, workflows etc. Because we tend to file and find using metadata, the old folder-based search method generally becomes redundant and this example of metadata is just that, an example. We will custom build this specifically around your organization, your procedures, your processes.

Capturing

We will use this as a generic example for today. Looking at the first part of the system, let’s look at ways of capturing information. To make sure the input process is quick and easy now, let’s say we’ve got some correspondence to one of your clients or suppliers. This might be on letterhead, it might be a word document, it could be a spreadsheet, a photo, a video, a design file, any file format whatsoever can be saved in the system. How do we save it? The same way you do. We simply click on save but instead of saving it in your folders on your server, we now save it in the M-Files System, which also lives on your server. It asks us to categorize this. Would you put this under company admin, general admin that everyone can access, HR, job files? You’ve got various groups and departments already established and we’ll custom build the departments for and with you. Inside a department, you have document types, invoices, quotes, shipping documents, reports etc. Not only will we create the departments for and with you, but we will also then create your document types around your naming conventions. In this example, we’re going to call it job correspondence and it says well great, which job is it for? Instead of having to type them all in, what if we could pick it from a pre-set list? What if this list could come from your existing databases that you have? There could be job tracking databases or if you’re just managing it in spreadsheets, wherever this information is, we can link that to it. When we select job number one 3, M-Files says, I know things about the job. I know who the overriding client or customer is, I know who your job manager is, do you want me to fill out these auto fields? We say yes. These are what we call parent-child fields. When you select one piece of information, that fills out the rest for you. We pop it in today’s date and we hit create and that has been added to the system. You continue to work on the document as you normally do and now that we’re finished with it, it is saved into M-Files. We’ve captured our first document our letter to Bill Bloggs. The preview is shown on the right and its metadata that we’ve just filled out has been listed at the bottom.

Templates

Let’s do this again, but a far quicker and easier way. Because M-Files runs all day, you can build new documents from within the system. Instead of building it from scratch, under job files, one of your clients have requested a job report, a status report and it launches your reporting template. The nice thing about managing templates here is, if you changed our reporting template, it’s then globally changed and you’re all on that new version moving forward. This is great for workplace health and safety documents, leave applications, common information that you’re using and referring to. These templates can all be managed here. M-Files fills out the bulk of the filing fields for me so all I have to do is pop in today’s date. It even sets up an automatic naming convention, which I’ll come back to. Our job report is launched, your letter head is on top and your standard report is listed at the bottom. These items in dark grey are metadata that’s come from M-Files and been inserted into your document. Often this metadata from M-Files has come from your existing databases. If you wanted to put in additional metadata, like perhaps the documents version number, using our M-Files tab which follows you around in Office, we can insert additional fields. In this case our document’s version number and that’s another item in dark grey. Later I’m going to change this version and you’ll see that we’ll go from version one to version two. We’re finished with this one, so we saved this into the system. We’ve captured our second document. Its preview is shown on the right and its metadata is listed at the bottom. I’ve set up automatic naming, where it named what it is, who the client is and the job number. You can have any combination you want. The nice thing about this is, I didn’t have to fill any of that out. I didn’t have to spell it correctly. I didn’t have to adhere to your crazy rules about how we’re supposed to file things here. It just did it all for me. We’re not relying on staff to get those processes right. It also means that every document going in and out of the building is named in a consistent method.

Capture Emails Quickly

Let’s have a look at Outlook and emails. Emails are notoriously difficult to capture and file. Some of the problems of the emails is first, they are an editable type document. They’ve got attachments. I’ve no idea whether you have dealt with it or not. I’ve sent it to you and to someone else. I don’t know who’s filed it or responded. Six months later, you run out of space in Outlook and you delete it. Company information is disappearing, which is a disaster. Luckily M-Files integrates into the Outlook system. To file it, all we do is drag and drop. I can see that this email is an IT agreement from our IT supplier. To me that sounds like company correspondence, so I just popped this into this folder and it files it for me. It fills out the subject line, based on the subject line of your email, the dates the addresses so there is nothing to do. Click on create and that one’s added to the system. You’ve automatically complied with the Electronics Acts and it’s all backed up on the server. You can delete it from your PC if you wish. A couple of nice things to note, when you file something in the M-Files system, it’s given a blue category. Visually I can see that one out of four emails have been captured. If I emailed this through to you and to Michelle in your office, who is responsible for filing it? Of course, you have no idea. You both might do it or none of you may do it. Let’s say Michelle’s filed it. When you go to file it into the system, it tells you it’s already being done. It saves on email duplication. How much time and space are wasted capturing duplicate emails? The file format that we saved this in, is an Outlook email, so when you open it, you can reply, forward, open the attachments. We have it as a useful email message not as a piece of paper in a filing cabinet. I’m going to follow another email but do this one a slightly different way. This one has an attachment and often when people email you attachments, it’s not so much the email you’re after, it’s more the attachments. I’m going to ask M-Files to separate out and file automatically all the attachments for me. Because this is from one of our clients, I’m going to put this under job correspondence and M-Files fills out the bulk of the fields. All I have to do is say the particular job and everything else is completed for me. If I was doing a lot of work with job number 134, I would have our job 134 folder created on the side and just simply drag and drop into it and it wouldn’t ask me any questions. We add that very quickly and it too gets a blue category. When we go into the M-Files System, instead of simply having an email which you can click on and open this one has been put in a folder where we have our email that’s available to us. Of course, but more importantly, the attachment is there and if you were to search for the word cabinets within your filing system, it would take you straight to the attachment, which is what you really wanted but we’ve also got the email there as well, should you need to open and reply.

Scanning

If it’s a piece of paper, we can run it through a high-speed document fed scanner. Load up a stack of pages and it’ll scan them through 70 pages a minute, straight up onto the screen. You can make use of your existing photo copiers or other scanning devices. We just find this as a nice ergonomic unit, especially for the person who’s opening the mail. There are many ways of scanning. One way is to right-click on that document from scanner. I’m not going to do that but if we opened the mail, I would scan it through and it would ask me who’s it from, what’s it about, where would you like to file it, usual metadata questions.

Importing your existing Documents

Instead of batch scanning I am going to batch import, which is effectively the same thing. I’ve put together some example documents that we’re going to file as a batch. It’ll open the first one and show a preview of what we’re filing on the right. It names it for you based on the name of the document in your folder, so your naming conventions that you already have are covered. As part of that process, we fill out our usual metadata fields like we had previously and when I hit create on the first one, if you look over on the left, you’ll see the first document is added and the next one’s opened. Its preview is shown on the right and its name is maintained. Of course, the whole point of your folders is, they’re groups of documents. We know this is the correspondence folder, for this client. Why don’t we say create all and when we do that, each of the documents are added to the system. The original file format is maintained. Your original naming convention and document dates are maintained. Now you can also search in a variety of ways, either keywords off the document, as well as via any metadata. It takes around 10 seconds to capture a folder. If you look at how many folders and subfolders you have and you each tackled your own areas, you would convert that across very quickly.

Linking to your Existing Folders

What if we could just map back to your existing network drives? Let’s say you had a Z Drive, which is where all your folders and subfolders live. We call this a traditional folder. We have mapped back to your Z Drive and there are all your folders and documents as they look in Z Drive today. That can be made available from day one.

That’s the first part of the system which is capture. The capture side should be quicker and easier than what we’re doing today. We’re not having to physically move this information around and file it, we’re doing it all electronically.

Retrieval

Let’s look at the retrieval side. This is where we start to see the real benefits. It is instant retrieval of what you need. If you wanted to know what time the sunset was tonight in your location, you’d put in the word sunset and your suburb into Google and you’d get yourself an instant answer. You don’t need to know that the information came from a spreadsheet, 20 folders deep on a server in Canberra. You don’t really care, you just ask the question and you get an instant answer. Wouldn’t it be nice if your filing system worked the same way? That you could ask a question, based on what it is you know you did, you don’t have to know where it was put or how it was named, and M-Files works just like that. It allows us to find things based on what it is we want, not having to remember how it was named or saved. Very vaguely, I remember I spoke to someone called Bloggs. That’s it, that’s all I know, a very vague search. I get documents totalling 32. It highlights where the word appears in the name, which is nice and throughout the metadata and it even highlights each of the instances within our document, but it’s too many. I now remember it had something to do with Bloggs and it’s an invoice and we narrow it down in this case to 7. It shows me where both words appear in the name, the metadata and throughout our document. 99 times out of a hundred you know who you’re talking to. You know what they’re looking for and you drill it down to a couple of documents every time. This really means no more telephone tag, as any inquiry, you can say, yep looking at it what would you like to know?

Searching by Customised Shortcuts

Depending on where you’re sitting within the business you’re going to want things in very different ways. What you’ve tried to do, as everyone does, is you’ve tried to squeeze all staff into one filing system and of course that didn’t really work. Everybody goes off and makes their own information silos, saves things on the desktop etc and you don’t know their process. Hence the challenges we have today. What if I could give you a filing system for each user? Designed as if the entire world revolved around them, in their job role and that’s what we do. I’ve set up some example searches across the whole business, of some of the searches that we can create for you. You might say, show me all our current job files and these are all our jobs. If we go into the Bloggs’ job, there are all the documents and all the folders for them. Maybe you’d like to look at it from a client point of view or perhaps sales and marketing and if we click on Bloggs there’s our client. I can see their address, phone numbers, contact details, email addresses etc. We can have this working as a customer relationship management or CRM tool. You no doubt already have this information somewhere, but wouldn’t it be nice, when it’s also available in your filing system. Perhaps you’d like to look at it from a HR point of view. If we look at our employee, Angela I can see she has an employee documents, contract documents and a performance appraisal. If we go into her performance review, we can see what it is, who it’s for, when it was and then a preview of the appraisals on the right-hand side. Maybe you’d like to look at it from an asset register point of view. Click on the right one from an asset register and I can see regarding this PC, how much it was, when we bought it, the serial number, whose desk it’s on and even warranty expiration dates can be listed as well.
Maybe from an account point of view, you might say, show me all invoices by supplier. If we go into Honda we can see our invoice for the car etc. One of my favourite ones, that I use all the time, is recently accessed by me, as it’s always going back to things I’ve recently worked on and one of those things was our report that we created earlier and when we click on our report document again we get our reports metadata at the bottom and our reports preview on the right. What we’re trying to demonstrate is however you want to search for this information we get an answer for you immediately. No more telephone tag. This will increase productivity significantly by giving you what you need, the moment you need it.

Processing Documents

Annotations

Once we have found some information, we often need to work on it. If I had emailed this report to you and to Michelle in your office, you would make some changes, you’d send it back to me and I’ve somehow got to collate all that together. What if you could mark it up on the fly, at the same time, where you could both work on it? You might highlight sections, scrub out these parts or you can put arrows on it or maybe a post-it note that doesn’t fall off. We’re annotating over the top of the document, not on the original. You can print it with or without the notes. We can rubber stamp it. We’ve customized rubber stamps, saying it’s approved for payment and I can even e-sign it on the fly.

Version Control

If you wish to change the original, we have a simple checkout process. Whilst this document is checked out to me, only I can change it. Everybody else can still view it in the office, but only I can make changes. We’ve maintained our versioning integrity. I’ve finished with my changes, so I save this back into the system so everybody else can use it again if they wish. We can see that it’s red. I also see now that number is version two, and I think, well that’s interesting, how did that come about? I can ask for the documents history and I see version 1 and 2. I can see they were created 12 minutes apart by the same user. In your case, of course, it might be weeks apart, by different staff members, but we’ll use this one as an example. What I’d like to look at is our current version, just to see where ours is up to. M-Files have said, wouldn’t it be nice if you could see the history of how we got here? Using the compare feature I can open the original document and the current one at the same time. The originals opened on top and current is opened on the bottom and you can see the differences between our documents. I think version 2 is awful and I want to go back to version 1. I close this down, click on the version I like, and I say can I roll back to the earlier version and it says yes, and it creates version 3. One minute later back to back, instant and easy version control, that cannot be circumvented by staff.

Distributing Documents

Now that we’ve worked on a document, you often want to send it to somebody. A common feature is to right-click and send a copy by email and M-Files attaches it as it is a Word document and you can hit Send. Perhaps you don’t want to send it out as an editable Word document, so in your world, you open it as word document and save it as a PDF on the desktop. You then attach it, send it and delete it from the desktop. That’s way too hard. We know you want to do those sorts of things, so we give you the ability to send as a PDF by email. M-Files opens it, converts it, attaches it as a PDF and you can hit Send. You’ll see niceties like that throughout the whole M-Files experience, just simple day-to-day processes made easier. When you send this job report off to your client, shouldn’t you be filing that, and we give you the ability to do that in one go. With our send and save to M-Files button, you can do both at the same time.

The Power of Metadata

There are the first two parts of the system, filing and finding of documents using metadata and obviously some significant productivity gains and enhancements just there. In the third and last part of the system is where we’ll see it all come together. What if we could apply this theory of metadata to other things within the business? What if you can have metadata around clients, contacts, suppliers, staff members? You will then start to see, that all your information like emails, word documents, Spreadsheets, Bill of Quantities and all your knowledge like phone numbers, email addresses, status of jobs, follow-up dates etc., can all be brought together into one place. Your one-stop shop for all your information and knowledge. The best way to start to show you the third and last part of the process is with this example. We’re going to do a search for all staff. We do a search for all employees and there’s 12 of us. If you click on me as an example, I’m not a document, I’m an employee, but I still have metadata. It says I’m a director, a job manager, so I have multiple roles. I have addresses, phone numbers, contact details, emergency contact information, etc. This is metadata for me, the employee. You may have noticed already, there’s these little arrows that appear throughout M-Files and it shows that there are things linked to me. In my case, I’m working on four jobs, I’ve got five employees in my team, I’ve got five outstanding assignments to do. This is an overview of me, the employee. Let’s go down further. Of the jobs that I’m working on, one of the jobs was 134. If we go into that job, who is the client, Bloggs Pty Ltd. When I click on my client’s card, I get the clients metadata, addresses, phone numbers, contacts etc. Again, this sort of thing is available in your database, but now it’ll be available in your document management system. Weren’t there documents associated with this job? Yes, and one of those documents is back to our report. Because we’re clicking on a report, a document, we’re getting our documents preview and our documents metadata. We can see there are things linked to this document. As it turns out an annotation, our client, a job manager, the job itself. If we were to go into the Bloggs client, aren’t there documents for them and again we’re back to our report. Wherever you are within the M-Files system, whether you’re within a job, client, contacts, supplier, staff member, wherever you are, everything is related back to everything else.

Assignments – Approvals & Tasks

All of that information and knowledge has been brought together and where this becomes particularly useful, is in a simple day-to-day example. If I asked you to call Bloggs, regarding that report, how do I get your attention? Do I send you a long email you don’t understand? Do I come and interrupt you, but you’re in this meeting? Do I put a post-it note on your screen? Even if I get your attention, how do I know you’ve done your job? Do I have to follow up with you tomorrow? That takes up your time and my time. Instead of having unmanaged plastic in trays, what if we could now have managed electronic in trays. These simple jobs are now called assignments. My assignment for you, is to call Bloggs, simple stuff. I am going to give you a bit more information, so you know what to do. I’m going to allocate it to the clients file, so I’ve got a permanent record that I’ve requested this of you. The deadline I’m giving you is today and it’s a short deadline to get it completed. As I’m set up into the system, I will assign it to myself and I will receive email notification, which I’ll show you in a moment. I have my new assignment. Somehow, we’ve notified you to do this work. How do you go about doing it? First, where’s the phone number for Bloggs? Is that in Outlook contacts, a business card or your accounting program or a database? Once you’ve got the phone number, where’s the report? Is that the report that you emailed to them? Is that the edited one that they sent back to somebody else in the office? How do you know you’re on the right version? Then you can pick up the phone conversely with M-Files. If I asked you to call Bloggs, you say great, what’s their phone number and there it is at the bottom. As the phone’s ringing, Bill picks up the phone and you say, hey Bill I’ve got this report open on my desk, what would you like today? What a result. How many times a day do we need a document and a phone number and email? Also, whether the attachments been actioned. An invoice and whether it’s been approved for payment? Most of what we’re doing in today is information and knowledge and this brings the two together nicely.

Notifications

How did we notify you of this? We found the best place to do that is in Outlook, because we send and receive emails all day every day. We get email notifications telling us of our new assignment. I just wait for that to be generated on the server and our new email will pop in. It’s called Bloggs, read the report. That’s fine, deadlines today so I better get on with it. Instead of going off in all those different areas, you can click on it directly from your notification and it takes you straight to your assignment. Not only do we have the contact details available to us at the bottom, however you wish to contact them, not only do we have the document that we need open on the right-hand side to answer their inquiry, but you’ve got the rest of their file open as well in case they ask you something obscure. This will be in your in tray for ever until your mark it as completed. To do so, you simply right-click and you pop a tick next to your name, signifying you’ve done it. We hit save and there is a tick on our clipboard.

Managing Office Workloads

As your boss I might say, show me all assignments for yourself and there’s a list of nine. I can see some you have completed, and some are outstanding. If I see that you’ve got too much work to do or too little work, I can micromanage in trays to ensure nothing gets missed. They are simple day-to-day tasks, which is nice, but a lot of what we’re doing of course is more complicated, where you’re dealing with multiple steps and stages, multiple deadlines and often different people throughout the office.

Workflows

One of the last things are going to show you is a workflow that brings all these different features together. We’re going to build a new document, but instead of building a document from scratch, under our job files, a client of ours has requested a quote. It launches, of course, your quoting template. We fill out our usual metadata fields like we had previously, and we pop in today’s date, we have also an expiry date. Now I got to put an expiry date of one week, and, you may have noticed there that it was a compulsory field with an Asterix. It wouldn’t allow me to continue without putting that in. We have an expiry date because it is a quote and our quoting template is launched and again we have it fill out the bulk of the filing fields for us as we had previously. This widget is three thousand dollars and as quick and as easy as that you have finished with your quote and we have saved that into the system. Like any other document, we have our preview on the right and we have it automatically named of what it is, who it’s for and the job. Our usual metadata is at the bottom, but now we also have this workflow area. This workflow is a client quote workflow. There’ll be dozens of different workflows built and created for you. We’re going to teach you how to maintain and manage them. This one has been assigned to me and I’ve received email notification telling me to do my job. The deadline I’ve been given is 24 hours and my job is to, please approve the quote. Well I’m looking at it, do I approve this, yes or no and if I’m happy I can go in two different directions, I can either say quote needs amending and it goes back to your desk or being happy I will move it on saying quote approved. I have the option to make a note if I wish and when I click OK, if you look at who it’s assigned to, whose desk it’s on, it goes off my desk and it goes on to Karen’s desk. Karen gets notified via email. Her job is as the quote has been approved then it is ready to be sent to the client. She does her job and she might say email tomorrow and when Karen clicks okay, it goes off her desk. It’s on nobody’s desk as it’s been sent. It’s a very simple and short workflow, but it gives you the idea that information can go through from person to person. Each one of you does a certain job or action and then it goes on to the next person. 24 hours before my deadline, I can be sent a reminder, because I often forget these things. 24 hours after I miss my deadline, you get notified. We can put all sorts of rules around these workflows. They can be very simple as demonstrated there or be more complex and go in a series of different directions, depending on the steps you require. We will teach you how to build, maintain and manage these. You also get a nice graphical overview so you can take that to a staff meeting and ask staff if this is working as a process for us.

Mobile/Web/Tablet Access

The last thing I wanted to show you is being able to access the entire M-Files solution from any mobile device. We’ve become a more and more mobile workforce. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could access the entire solution from any iPhone, tablet, PC, a web browser from wherever you are? You can have access to the entire M-Files solution. I can’t show you my mobile phone, but I can play for you a one-minute video which I’ll do now.

M-Files mobile access puts the information important to your business right at your fingertips. No matter where you are, view documents on the go, like that purchase invoice that just came in. Check it out, make sure everything is correct and approve it. Then Greg in accounting gets emailed automatically and he can pull the invoice up on his laptop and send the payment. It’s seamless, mobile and available for download now and it’s just one of the ways you can experience the magic of M-Files.

Customisation/Implementation/Training

That’s an overview of the system. What’s really important we have found over the last 20 years, is implementation. If we said, here’s some software, good bye, good luck, it just wouldn’t work. The challenges we find, of course, is you have multiple staff with multiple opinions. We need one filing system, one methodology. The first thing we’re going to do for you is develop a procedures and how-to manual specifically for your organization. We document what it is you do, e.g. how do you process the mail? What do you do with emails, reports, invoices, purchase orders etc.? Whatever it is you do, we’ll create this document for you. If you click on how we process the mail, there’s your workflow. This is a made-up example of course, but in your case, if it was incoming mail and they were general documents, they’re opened at admin to sort, scan and file. I’ve forgotten how to file, and I click on the word in blue and up come the filing instructions, written instructions in English by our trainers, not IT talk. It’s not a technical manual. These screenshots are a copy of your M-Files system, not our generic example here. This means if someone starts new, they’re to read this. This is how we operate. We then take it further, where we make fields compulsory, as you saw before with the asterisks, where you must file by who it’s from, what it’s about, when it came in or the system won’t let you file it. You get to set as many or as few rules around the database to ensure it’s captured a certain number of ways. We will then provide extensive training. We’ll train one or two people there as M file system administrators. They will set up procedures, processes, passwords. You’ll own it as a process, in-house. The ongoing maintenance for the system is maybe five minutes a month once it’s up and running. This is part of our project to do for you. You just need to maintain and manage it. If you get a new staff member, they’ll need a password and you type it in. We will then train the balance of the staff in small classes of up to three people for four hours. If we’re training you, processing your documents, through your scanners, based on your procedures and process manual, into your computers, then you’ll be at an expert level. We’ll have everybody trained in back-to-back training sessions. You go live the next day and you are guaranteed to get your results.

There you go that’s probably enough out of me. Hopefully you can see some significant improvements to the organization by making use of a metadata driven system.

Download a Trial/Quote

As we mentioned at the beginning, there is a fully functioning trial that you can now download from our homepage. You can also get an instant quote if you’d like an overview of the pricing for the solution. If you have any questions at any stage, drop me an e-mail or call me and we look forward to working with you on this project.